A Woman's Instinct
by AragothwinElfBlade
Summary: She just knew. JC


A/N: Big ol' J/C with some Audrey-bashing. No Chloes (or Audreys) were injured in the making of this story.

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When asked, she couldn't tell them how she knew where Jack was. It was simple enough, even to her complex mind. One day she just reached and he was there. Simple, easy, just like breathing. But she couldn't help but do it again and again. Defying logic, scoffing at science, chortling as she tried and failed to understand, it remained with her. Guided by it like a horse on a lunge line, she was free to move back and forth but couldn't stray too far before coming back.

"There," she pointed to the map. "They're keeping him there. I know it." Hayes was puzzled but Buchanan trusted her judgment. The tac team found him there. The whole time she watched from above via her monitor. Curtis wasn't as good as company as Jack was. They thought they were mistaken, they couldn't see him. She knew. Brusque and efficient she told them where to look, what they would find.

Jack was resting now. She had done her job. He was safe. Curtis had asked how she had known where to look. The runaround she gave him had been full of random babble from what she remembered of her Advance Calculus course in college. Frightening truth would remain hers and hers alone.

He woke with her name on his lips, asking first for his daughter and then for her. What they had done to him left him confused, wary of others. But his dead eyes came to life when she visited. "Chloe," he would draw her name out when he spoke. "Chloe," his eyes sparkled and he smiled at her. Unlike the rest, he never asked how she found him. He already knew. It was her he called for help when the pain became too much. It was her name he'd whispered to the walls of his cell on cold, lonely nights.

Everyone simply assumed they were together. That was easier to understand than the truth. He took over her couch first, unable to sleep in his bed. As time moved on he slept in her room. Not on the mattress, but on the floor next to her. One night when his labored breathing jarred her out of sleep, she invited him into her bed. All loose limbs and pliant warmth he crawled under the sheets and curled into her side with a contented murmur. She never had the heart to kick him out after.

They enjoyed each others waking company as well. He surprised by knowing how to cook, even if he could only manage Greek and Thai, and she startled him when he heard her singing in the shower. After that he always asked her to sing him to sleep. They both liked mystery novels, the classic ones, and detested Tom Clancy. Sitting on the couch together he would watch action movies with her, laughing his ass off as they got everything wrong. He got her a Russell Crowe poster for her birthday. She dressed up as Trinity for him on Halloween.

It never occurred to them to question what they had. Like her finding him, it was easy as reaching. The rest of the CTU accepted it as well. As a general rule, if you weren't scared of one, you were terrified of the other. It didn't help Jack liked to hang around Chloe's work station. When someone came by to give her trouble, he'd just lean back with his arms across his chest and smile.

They're relatively peaceful little world was shaken up when _she_ came back. Chloe couldn't bring herself to think of the other woman as Audrey. First names were for friends, and _she_ was not a friend. _Her_ attempts to convince Jack to be with her again lasted only long enough for him to look around frantically and hide behind Chloe once he spotted _her_. Neither woman was backing down, and Jack was in the middle.

Chloe was too proud to fight over her friend like dogs with a bone. Bluntly, she told Audrey that if Jack said he was done with _her_, it meant he was done with _her_, and could _she_ please leave him alone now.

Audrey had to pull _her_ jaw up off the floor, so did Buchanan for that matter. _She_ expected Chloe to back down without a fight. But every since that reaching had happened, Chloe found her place. Her job was to protect Jack Bauer at all costs, even if it meant protecting him from _her_. Audrey screamed, ranted, and cried. Chloe stood unmoved with her arms across her chest. Pathetically grateful, Jack hid behind Chloe's desk as he weathered the storm.

A half-hour later, Audrey was firmly escorted by Buchanan out of the building and informed she better not try to press charges or he would give the LAPD the security footage of the fight.

Audrey had a split lip and a broken nose. Chloe had scratches on her cheek and a hairline fracture of the wrist. Jack took a considerable amount of ribbing for Chloe's championship of him. However, no one at CTU challenged Jack again. At least, not while Chloe was in earshot.

As for their relationship, Chloe O'Brian became Chloe O'Brian-Bauer two years later. It was rumored that she could always find Jack, no matter where he was. She later joked that the sub-dermal GPS chip helped some. Together, they made organizations nervous internationally. Stories about their supposed 'exploits' abounded. What was scarier was the actual damage they had done.

When Jack finally retired, the two of them disappeared, much to the United States Government's great discomfort. At first, the international intelligence community searched for them. Everyone wanted to hire the computer genius and her field agent husband. But no one could find them. Every year, on the anniversary of Jack's rescue from the Chinese, Bill Buchanan got an anonymous e-mail with two words 'we're fine.'

Several years after Buchanan's retirement, the e-mails stopped coming. Of course, there were whispers that the now infamous pair was dead or went to ground permanently. Buchanan had trouble buying that. Especially when he saw what was left of a Basque sleeper cell in London on the next day's news. According to reports, they'd been trying to commit the cyber version of a nuclear explosion. All six members were dead, shot execution style, and their computers wiped. There were no suspects.


End file.
